Note (typography)

Note (typography)

A note is a string of text placed at the bottom of a page in a book or document or at the end of a text. The note can provide an author's comments on the main text or citations of a reference work in support of the text, or both. A footnote is normally flagged by a superscripted number immediately following that portion of the text the note is in reference to.

The first idea1 for the first footnote on the page, the second idea2 for the second footnote, and so on.

Occasionally a number between brackets or parentheses is used instead, thus: . Typographical devices such as the asterisk (*) or dagger (†) may also be used to point to footnotes; the traditional order of these symbols is *, †, ‡, §, ‖, ¶. In documents like timetables, many different symbols, as well as letters and numbers, may be used to refer the reader to particular notes.

In Arabic texts, a specific Arabic footnote marker (؂), encoded at code point U+0602 in Unicode, is also used.

Footnotes are notes at the foot of the page while endnotes are collected under a separate heading at the end of a chapter in a book or a document. Unlike footnotes, endnotes have the advantage of not affecting the image of the main text, but may cause inconvenience to readers who have to move back and forth between the main text and the endnotes.

The U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual devotes over two pages to the topic of footnotes. NASA has guidance for footnote usage in its historical documents.